Jack, I liked a lot of what you said and I’ll get to some of that in a minute. But first I want to address this quote of yours…

But I feel confident that’s not the case with fiction or poetry, and also with spirituality, a topic you and I both write about a lot. — Jack Preston King

I agree with you about fiction and poetry. While Medium used to have a very intense disdain for fiction they seem to have changed course a little bit. Some of the changes they’ve made have actually delighted me. I have finally had a few fiction stories in recent months that were granted visibility by the young curating staff. (And it’s amazing what difference that makes.) I even had one poem that was granted visibility and it got over 20 times as many views as any of my other poetry. Of course I admittedly suck at poetry so I have no expectations there. Every view and read and clap is like a bonus.

But spirituality? This is the one genre that Medium seems to be the most closed-minded about. If it ain’t mainstream then it just won’t get seen. I just checked my stats and not one single spirituality article out of the last 20 that I have published have been granted any visibility at all. My spirituality articles perform at only about 20 to 25 percent of what all my other pieces perform at. But hey, that’s okay. My spirituality articles are most emphatically NOT mainstream. And there is no way in hell I’m going to change them in order to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I’ve come to accept that Medium is simply not the place to publish spirituality articles that are not mainstream acceptable. But that’s okay. I don’t write them for reasons of popularity or money. It only takes one person reading it with an open mind and the information gets absorbed into the current mass consciousness zeitgeist, the herd mind. This is far, far, far more valuable than the dollar or two it might earn in the Partner Program.

Jack, you are so totally correct about the importance of outside links to Medium articles. I have no one to blame but myself for the lack of ‘success’ in this area. I completely and utterly and thoroughly loathe Facebook and I’ve been boycotting it for a long time now. If I lose a small handful of views because of this then so be it.

And Twitter and all the other social media giants are no different. I’m not boycotting Twitter (yet) but I like the fact that we can post an article we write here on Medium on Twitter without ever having to actually go to Twitter. That is really cool. But I don’t have tens of thousands of followers on Twitter so it is really quite pointless. Facebook, Twitter and all the other social media mega-sites run off the mentality of a junior high school popularity contest. I didn’t play that stupid game when I was in junior high school and I sure as hell am not going to play it now so many, many decades later. If I don’t get any views on Medium because of that then I am okay with that. I am a writer and not a prostitute.

In your original article you put forth the question of why we writers write. Most humans and by extension most writers live by an external locus of identity, as the men in white coats like to call it. We write for external validation. We write to prove our worth and popularity and thereby feel good about ourselves. We write to be accepted by the herd mind. We write in order to be accepted by ourselves, as judged by the acceptance we receive from others.

We write for a thousand reasons. But none of those reasons take us beyond our insatiable need for validation. None of those reasons bring true peace and enlightenment. None of those reasons change the world.

The most profound and successful writer doesn’t say a goddam word! It is through their silence and their BEING that change comes about (both for them and the world). By this definition I am most certainly not a very successful writer because I won’t shut the hell up.

But I’m not dead yet so there is still hope for me. It may still happen.

As long as we are obsessed with following and being followed then we are hopelessly stuck in that dualism. And we remain hopelessly oblivious to the oneness that supersedes all of duality.

Uh-oh! Did I just get a little spiritual there? Will I ever learn? Is there any hope left for me at all? It doesn’t look like it. I may never win any junior high school popularity contest and I only have myself to blame. Am I lucky, or what?

Thanks, Jack.